Congress Hall (Cape May)

Congress Hall is a historic hotel in Cape May, Cape May County, New Jersey. It was founded in 1816 by Thomas H. Hughes, and it was originally considered too big to be successful, but, after Hughes was elected to the US Congress in 1828, he renamed the hotel to "Congress Hall". It was burned to the ground during the Great Fire of 1878, but it was rebuilt in brick within a year, and Presidents Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Ulysses S. Grant, and Benjamin Harrison vacationed at the hotel, which became Harrison's official "Summer White House". In 1968, Reverend Carl McIntire purchased the hotel as Cape May's seafront deteriorated, and it became part of his Cape May Bible Conference. With the decline of the Bible Conference, the hotel fell into a state of disrepair, bu tit was restored from 1995 to 2002 and was re-established as a fully-functioning and high-end resort hotel along Cape May Beach.